Over
by clara fox
Summary: Hermione isn’t satisfied with the accepted version of Snape’s actions on the night of Dumbledore’s death. A canon friendly [at least until book 7] look at Snape’s true intentions through Hermione’s eyes. Some HR, fleeting HS, lots and lots of angst.
1. When She Comes Walking Over

**Author: **Clara Fox  
**Title:** Chosen  
**Summary:** Hermione isn't satisfied with the accepted version of Snape's actions on the night of Dumbledore's death. A canon-friendly (at least until book 7!) look at Snape's true intentions through Hermione's eyes. Some H/R, fleeting H/S, lots of angst.  
**Rating:** T for revisiting character death (canon) and some language.  
**Disclaimer:** All the characters and their memories were created by and belong to JK Rowling.

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Chapter 1: When She Comes Walking Over

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It was a beautiful day. Hermione sat on the lakeshore and hugged her knees to her chest. There was something wrong – something didn't make sense, but she couldn't pin down exactly what it was. This wasn't a novel type of problem for her, but she wasn't used to facing it alone. 

Of course there was something wrong about that night, Harry had practically shouted at her when she had tried to enlist his help. The greasy, lying, murdering bastard had killed Dumbledore. Harry had always thought Hermione was supposed to be the smart one.

Ron hadn't been much help either. Since that night they had been on better terms than any time since their second year – maybe ever – but the lull was tenuous. Hermione was wise enough to guess that it could break in only two ways: either they would both have to finally admit, and act on, their feelings for each other, or one of them would say something to ruin it and then the best option available would be constant, disabling awkwardness.

Although the first option was terrifying in its own ways, the second would be disastrous for their ability to work together with Harry over the next year; Hermione had a fleeting vision of her hand and Ron's reaching out to secure the final Horcrux and then both of them recoiling at each other's touch, allowing Snape to grab it for himself while laughing manically. She shook off the ridiculous image and chided herself for giving in to melodrama.

Hermione stood up and began walking along the lake. Harry had refused to help even before he knew what she was getting at, and Ron wouldn't be much help with this even if there were some way they could work together without risking their temporary peace. If Dumbledore were still here, Hermione knew she could have talked to him. But then, if Dumbledore were still here, the problem wouldn't exist.

If only Snape hadn't killed Dumbledore: that was the crux of the issue. If Snape hadn't shown his true colors in such a dramatic and unequivocal way. Was that what bothered Hermione? That Snape, so long a man of shadows and cloaked motivation, had laid everything out there and stood for a moment in the bright light?

Hermione realized with a surge of panic that she didn't believe what Snape had done. It wasn't the disbelief that stems out of betrayal and shock, but her usual, cool logic that told her a piece of the story was missing. Something in Snape's actions didn't fit. He had made a choice that night, but it wasn't to lay bare his loyalties to the Dark Lord – it was to make a show of choosing sides. A show meant to fool everyone but one person. Hermione only fully understood the source of her panic when she realized that that person was her.

_Miss Granger, Miss Lovegood: tend to Professor Flitwick – he seems to be taken ill. No, there's no time –_

Snape had dashed away down the corridor faster than Hermione had ever seen him go. So why had he stood perfectly still for the several long seconds he spent speaking to them? Hermione had remembered feeling very strange as Snape spun on his heel and hurried off, but the discovery of a stunned Flitwick inside the office had put it out of her mind. Try as she might, Hermione couldn't bring back anything but snatches of feeling - impressions of worry, regret, fear, and a wave of pleading so strong that even the memory of it made Hermione want to fall to her knees. That night, in the very short time between experiencing those emotions and letting the urgency of the fight take precedence, Hermione had chalked them up to the after-effects of taking Felix Felicis. Now, she realized that Snape had been inside her mind.

The worry and fear could just as easily have been in her already, and at some point, Hermione had regretted pretty much every one of her actions of that night. But the pleading hadn't come from her. Snape had been trying to tell her something, only he hadn't had the time and she hadn't had the practice with legilimency to make the message more clearly understood.

A faint hooting and a tiny plume of grey smoke against distant blue mountains told her that the Hogwarts Express would soon be arriving, and Hermione reluctantly left her jumbled thoughts by the shore of the lake and walked back toward the castle to rejoin her two best friends.

The train was quieter and emptier than Hermione had ever seen it. She, Harry, and Ron had a compartment to themselves for the first time in quite a while. They had left Neville and Luna both in the crowd of funeral guests apparating away outside the school gates; theirs and many other parents had opted to side-along apparate their children straight home rather than letting them ride the train, heavily-guarded as it was.

Ginny had declined Hermione's invitation to travel with them, instead heading to the other end of the train with a group of her girl friends, and Hermione realized with a falling heart that Harry had gone through with his Noble Sacrifice, the stupid boy. She wondered if he knew what Ginny was planning, but now was not the time to tip him off to that.

Ron had been sending what he clearly thought were furtive glances at Hermione for the entire half-hour they had been underway. As pleased as she was to have his attention finally, Hermione wasn't ready for that sort of distraction at the moment.

"Ron, if you want my sandwich, you just have to ask."

"Oh, er… I wasn't…" He gave up trying to decide whether or not he was meant to protest that he hadn't been looking at the sandwich, and failed spectacularly to catch the package Hermione had thrown at him. "Ouch!"

"Sandwiches aren't meant to be dangerous, Ron," Harry snorted. "Aren't you supposed to be good at blocking flying objects from hitting things like… your face?"

"It didn't hit my face, I banged my wrist against your giant rock-luggage you've left on the seat. And I'm trained to catch things that are thrown by people who can aim, not things chucked well to the side of me by batty witches."

"Oh, ha ha, Ron. You've found me out: I'm not sporty," Hermione snorted gently, not about to give Ron the extra attention he was clearly fishing for by tenderly rubbing his wrist.

"And I'd appreciate it if you didn't attempt to destroy my possessions, Ronald," said Harry. "Especially since now we have some privacy, I was going to show you what it is."

"That's the package McGonagall gave you just before we left?" asked Hermione.

"Yes, and Ron's nearly spilled it," Harry replied. He began to unwrap the white tissue from around the large object, and both Hermione and Ron gasped when they saw the white light dancing from among the wrappings.

"You got the _Pensieve?_"

"Dumbledore left it to you, then?"

Harry nodded, and was silent for a moment. Then he said, with some effort, "I guess Dumbledore had… prepared… for something to happen to him. McGonagall said there was a card left by it saying I was to take it, and also my name was on this." He held out a small, partitioned wooden box that looked to be full of tiny crystal vials. "The Pensieve is empty now, but McGonnagall thinks Dumbledore bottled everything else he knew that he hadn't time to tell me. I'm going to go through it all when I'm back on Privet drive – I expect that will be the best way to spend time there while mostly being somewhere else."

"Harry, this is amazing." Hermione spoke softly.

"But didn't Dumbledore say he'd told you everything he knew about the Horcruxes?" asked Ron slowly.

"Yes… well, no, actually. He never told me how to destroy them."

"You know," began Hermione, "some of these bottles are empty. I think you're meant to add your own memories to the Pensieve, Harry. Maybe alongside yours, Dumbledore's will make more sense."

Harry looked thoughtful. "But I already know my memories. And I don't know how to put them in the Pensieve, or get them into the bottles once they're there."

"Putting them in is easy, Harry. You just have to bring up the beginning of the memory and pull at it with your wand. I found some books about pensieves after the first time you told us about them. The real benefit of them is that they let you look at your memories from a new viewpoint, and they let other people look at them. Other people who might notice something you didn't."

"Other people like us!" Ron said excitedly.

Harry paused for only a moment before closing his eyes and lifting his wand to his head. A thin, silvery-white strand clung to the wand tip when he pulled it away. The three of them sat in silence for a few seconds, watching as the strand shuddered a few times before coiling neatly onto the surface of the Pensieve and disappearing in a blinding swirl.

Before the light had subsided, Harry was already pulling another strand from his head. He dropped this one into the Pensieve, and retrieved another, then another. Then he stopped, breathing heavily.

"That should cover what happened that night. You two go ahead and look at them – I don't want to go back to that just now."

Hermione looked at Ron, and together they bent toward the shimmering liquid in the basin. The train compartment seemed to twist on its side as Hermione fell down through darkness tinged with a green light.

_They __were standing in a cave lit from far away by a green glow…Harry and Dumbledore were crossing the water in a boat… Dumbledore was falling to his knees, begging Harry to stop forcing a potion down his throat… Harry grabbed a heavy locket from a stone basin… flames erupted from Dumbledore's wand… Harry was pleading with Dumbledore to hold up for just a while longer…_

_Dumbledore waved his wand and Harry went stiff under his cloak… Dumbledore and Malfoy were facing each other on the top of the tower…Three Death Eaters burst through the tower door… Snape was staring into Dumbledore's eyes, a look of deepest revulsion on his face… Snape pointed his wand and a jet of green light burst from it… Dumbledore's body was suspended in the air for an agonizingly long moment before falling gracefully from the tower…_

_Harry was rushing across the grounds, in pursuit of several dark-robed figures and pursued by two others… Hagrid's hut was bursting into flames… Snape was shouting at his fellow Death Eaters… Snape was shouting at Harry… Harry was on his knees, groping for his wand… _

_Harry was standing without moving in front of a crumpled figure on the ground…Hagrid was saying something… Harry was examining a small object… The sound of phoenix song rose above the anguished cries of the crowd…_


	2. I've Been Waiting To Show Her

Disclaimer: The characters and their memories still belong to JK Rowling.

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Chapter 2: I've Been Waiting To Show Her

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Hermione gasped as she found herself back in the train compartment. Next to her, Ron had sat down heavily on the floor, and across from her, Harry was studiously avoiding her gaze. After a moment, Harry stood up and muttered something about finding the snack cart. Ron and Hermione watched him leave in silence. 

Next to the clear horror of Harry's memories, the reality of the Hogwarts Express seemed somehow blurred to Hermione. She realized that for the second time that day, tears were pouring unchecked down her face. She took a few slow breaths and began to collect her thoughts.

She had been prepared for what she'd seen – after all, Harry had told them both his side of the events that night. But she had not truly thought that Harry's memories would intensify the feeling that Snape's actions weren't as easily explainable as they seemed.

Snape had communicated feelings to her instead of stunning – or killing – both her and Luna. By leaving them with Flitwick Snape had made certain both that Flitwick would be revived and tended to, and that Hermione would be kept out of the action upstairs.

Snape had killed Dumbledore; as shocked as she had felt when she first heard the news, Hermione had never doubted the truth of what Harry had told them. But now much more was clear to her. Dumbledore had never had a chance – even if Malfoy never really had it in him to go through with murder, and Hermione knew now that he didn't, another of the three Death Eaters would have done it if Snape hadn't. And if Snape hadn't done it, the Death Eaters certainly would have killed him right there. No, Snape had had no choice. The look of revulsion on his face when he looked at Dumbledore did not reflect his feelings for the man, but for the deed he was about to commit. It was almost the exact expression Harry had worn while forcing the potion down Dumbledore's throat.

What struck Hermione even more strongly, however, was the look that Snape and Dumbledore had shared. It was the same piercing gaze Snape had given her, but this time the pleading was on both sides of the look. _Dumbledore_ had been pleading with Snape. "Severus, please…" Hermione felt sick as she realized what he had been asking: not for mercy, but for death.

Hermione choked back a sob and fought the burning sickness rising in her throat. For the second time that day, she felt Ron's arms wrap around her, and for the second time she clung to his chest, trying to think only about the steady sound of his heartbeat.

They sat there until Hermione's breathing had gone back to something resembling normal. She felt Ron's heartbeat begin to speed up, and raised her head to find him looking intently into her face. For the first few seconds after he started to kiss her, Hermione forgot about the things she had seen in Harry's memory, forgot about the look Snape had given her, forgot they were at war against an enemy who had nothing to lose.

As the train went around a bend and they were thrown off balance, both Hermione and Ron seemed to remember where they were. As memories flooded back into Hermione, she realized that as much as she wanted to do nothing but savor all the implications of Ron finally coming to his senses, there was a much more important task at hand.

She folded a hand around Ron's jawline and smiled into his eyes. "Maybe we should pick this up sometime… and somewhere… a little more private," she whispered, tilting her head toward the compartment door.

Ron grunted a mixed sound of unwillingness and assent, and Hermione jumped primly up onto a seat just as Harry pushed his way back into the compartment.

"All right, Harry?" Hermione asked softly.

"Yeah," Harry attempted to smile. Ron looked uncomfortable and started talking very quickly about the new broom models that were going to be released that summer; Hermione wondered how much of the reason was how close they had come to being discovered sprawled on the floor, and whether he actually remembered the reason Harry had been upset in the first place.

As the boys continued their mystifying Quidditch conversation, Hermione let her thoughts drift back to Snape's actions. Was there anything else that could point to his remaining secretly on the side of the Order, or was she just deluding herself due to a too-deeply held belief that teachers could do no wrong?

The events that took place atop the tower would have played out the same way no matter which side Snape was on, Hermione decided. Without finding out what was communicated mentally between Snape and the Headmaster, she couldn't know for sure. Hermione thought about what Snape had done on his retreat from the school.

He hadn't killed or even hurt anyone, as far as Harry's memory showed. The Death Eaters with him had blasted Hagrid's hut and attacked Harry, but Snape had actually tried to stop them doing that. Claiming that Harry was for the Dark Lord alone to deal with could be the truth, but could as well be a convenient way of shielding Harry.

Snape had been furious, that much was certain. But he had just killed the greatest wizard of the age (on that wizard's orders?), and then the son of his old rival had called him a coward. And instead of retaliating, Snape had blocked Harry's attacks and chided him for his inability to cast nonverbal spells and to close his mind. Hermione thought back to exactly what Snape had said. Were his insults any different from those he doled out to wayward students in his classroom? In a way they were: in the classroom he berated Harry for mistakes, but out on the grounds that night, Snape had laughed at Harry's inability to compete with the Dark Lord, and then _told him what he had to do to change that. _

Snape had identified Harry's greatest weaknesses, and warned him about them. Snape had kept Harry from performing the Dark magic that his rage had driven him to attempt, and then Snape had shown Harry what he must work on to even have a chance at defeating Voldemort. Only a very stupid loyal Death Eater – or a brilliant triple-crosser – would do something like that.

Hermione felt even more strongly now that she was right about Snape, but she knew at the same time that there was no proof, and that anybody who wanted to remain prejudiced against Snape would find it very easy to ignore or explain away any indications of his goodness. She knew which memory she had to find. The only question was whether Dumbledore had saved it.

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A/N: edited to remove Hermione's knowledge of the Unbreakable Vow. Many thanks to Possum132 for catching that.  



	3. I Don't Hardly Know Her

Disclaimer: All the characters and their memories were created by and belong to JK Rowling.

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Chapter 3: I Don't Hardly Know Her

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Hermione pulled the box of vials into her lap and pulled out one that seemed to be empty. She carefully extracted the memories Harry had left in the Pensieve and let them run into the bottle, then stoppered it and replaced it in the box. On the other side of the compartment, Harry and Ron were deep in an argument over the effectiveness of something that might have been a Quidditch move that seemed to involve a starfish. Hermione rolled her eyes almost automatically and turned her attention back to the vials. To her relief, she found that they were each labeled with a date. 

Hermione thought hard. Harry had talked to Hagrid just after Ron was poisoned, which was on his birthday. The conversation Hagrid had mentioned must have happened a few days before – not more than a couple of weeks. The only labels that seemed to come from that time window were the ones marked "24.Feb." and "1.Mar." She tipped the contents of the former into the Pensieve and watched as the surface swirled and shone.

"Harry, do you mind if I use the Pensieve for a bit?" Hermione tried to keep her voice light.

"Er, are you sure you want to?"

"I wanted to see if there was something I missed the first time. I know what's coming now… I can handle it."

Harry shrugged, still looking a little concerned, and before Ron could begin what Hermione was sure was a protest, she bent over the stone basin, said, "I'll be back in a bit then," and found herself falling headlong through snowy branches on the edge of the Great Forest.

_Dumbledore and Snape were walking so briskly that Hermione had to run every few steps to keep up. It looked like Snape had just caught up to Dumbledore._

"_Did it ever occur to you that maybe you're taking too much for granted, Albus? You just assume that I'm ready to go through with this. But what if you're wrong? What if I don't want to do this anymore?"_

_The Headmaster stopped abruptly and turned to face the younger man. "But you already agreed to do it, Severus. You made me a promise, and that is my final word on the subject."_

"_I never promised to help him kill you."_

"_But you did promise to do whatever I asked of you, no matter how extreme the request. I certainly am not about to let you out of a promise because you no longer like its implications, and I am even more adamant about this now that your life depends on giving Draco whatever aid he may need."_

"_And _your_ life depends on him failing."_

"_My decisions about my own life are mine to make, and not yours to question. I will repeat that I believe it is extremely unlikely that Draco will even come near to succeeding, but should he do so, I expect you to respect this request as much as you have any other wish of mine."_

"_What if I don't?"_

_Dumbledore sighed wearily. "Have we not been over this enough times, Severus? Please consider the possibility that your presence in the most intimate of Voldemort's circles is more vital to Harry's ultimate success than is my continued existence. A very wise man once said that to the well-organised mind, death is but the next great adventure. And I flatter myself that my mind is better-organised than most."_

_Snape glared silently at the Headmaster. "You will do it then, Severus?"_

"_If I have to… I will do it, yes."_

"_Very good. Now, let us get out of this cold evening. I wonder if any of that most excellent onion soup is left over from lunch. You didn't have any then? Oh, a pity. It…" Dumbledore's voice faded as the white around Hermione intensified until she found herself alone in the middle of nothingness. With an effort, she pulled herself out of the memory._

Hermione caught her breath as she landed back on her seat on the train. Harry and Ron were staring across at her with looks of concern.

"I'm okay," said Hermione.

"You look rattled," Ron protested.

"No, really, I'm okay this time. I just have to do one thing."

Hermione pulled Dumbledore's memory out of the Pensieve with her wand and coiled it carefully back into its vial. She replaced the vial in the wooden box, and touched the tip of her wand to her temple. _I am standing outside Snape's office, and he has just rushed out to tell me and Luna that Flitwick has collapsed._ As she pulled the wand away from her head, Hermione gasped as she saw, or rather felt, the memory on which she had been concentrating rushing through her head like a movie on fast-forward. She let the silky white strand dangle above the Pensieve as she glanced up at the others. They were watching her silently, but seemed to know better than to interrupt her. She let the strand drop into the basin, and didn't hesitate at all before diving into it.

"_Miss Granger, Miss Lovegood: tend to Professor Flitwick – he seems to be taken ill." Snape looked intently at the Hermione next to Luna, and the now-Hermione devoted all of her willpower to slow down the course of time within the memory. When the three figures in the corridor had all frozen in their positions of shock and haste, Hermione moved between herself and Snape, looking into both of their faces for some clue to what he had been trying to tell her. Her own eyes were wide and blank, his intensely focused, but otherwise uninformative. _

_Hermione looked around, frustrated, and allowed time to proceed slowly again. As Snape held the other girl's gaze, Hermione felt, rather than saw, a flash of something all around her. She concentrated hard again, and after a moment succeed in going backwards in the memory. She felt the flash again, and allowed herself to move forward again, but painfully slowly. For a long time nothing happened, and then it was as if a different memory had appeared around her. Hermione gasped as she recognized the hooded eyes of Bellatrix Black and the pale face of Narcissa Malfoy. Snape was there as well; Narcissa's hand was in his, and from Bellatrix's wand a thin stream of red flame was shooting, encircling the clasped hands. Hermione recognized the symbolic binding of an Unbreakable Vow._

_As suddenly as the scene had appeared, it was gone, leaving Hermione once more in the dungeon corridor, triumphant but confused. She slowly let the memory speed up again until she felt another flash, and worked her way back to that one. Suddenly, she was in the Great Forest again, standing between Dumbledore and Snape, who were clearly in the middle of the same argument she had witnessed in Dumbledore's memory. Dumbledore wore an expression of stern affection; Snape looked plaintive and sadder than Hermione had ever seen him in real life._

_The next flash she found was a scene Hermione did not recognize. It was a windy heath with a strange formation of boulders perched at the edge of a soaring cliff. Snape was there, alone this time, simply standing in the middle of Hermione's view. Hermione went backwards and forwards in the memory twice more, but she couldn't find any flashes in them apart from these three._

If Hermione was unusually quiet the rest of the way to London, so were Harry and Ron. The boys had exhausted all possible avenues of Quidditch conversation, and Hermione was doing her best not to seem as agitated as she felt. When the brick and stone buildings near King's Cross came into view and the train had begun to screech to a stop, Hermione stood up.

"Ron, do you think your ministry driver will be able to take my luggage back with you?"

"Yeah, but I thought you were coming back to the Burrow straight away? What are you on about?"

"I've got to make a quick stop first," Hermione lied more glibly than she'd thought she could pull off. "My parents will be worried, you know. I should at least drop by."

"Oh… all right. You'll be apparating then?" Ron was clearly trying to keep the jealous twinge out of his voice.

Hermione smiled gently. "Yes, much faster. I'll see you in a while then? Don't know if they'll want me to stay through dinner, so you won't be worried, will you?"

Ron shook his head as Hermione hugged first him, then Harry. "I'll see you both soon," she said as cheerily as she could manage, and closed her eyes to concentrate on her destination.

As Hermione disapparated, Harry turned to Ron. "Why would her parents be worried? They're both dentists."

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A/N: There's only one more chapter to come, and it shouldn't take long. I changed the name of the story because: dear lord are there a lot of stories called "Chosen." Maybe this should serve as my lesson not to be so cliche-friendly. It should be obvious that this is never going to happen, especially to those of you who already know what the title of the fourth chapter must be. -clara 


	4. But I Think I Could Love Her

Disclaimer: All the characters and their memories were created by and belong to JK Rowling. Also, I planned this as the final chapter, so be warned now that there's no more. Also, all the titles are lines from the song "Crimson and Clover."

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Chapter 4: But I Think I Could Love Her

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The wind blew Hermione's hair across her face and then whipped it out to the side. She looked around her with mingled satisfaction and trepidation. She was in the right place: the sea undercutting the lonely cliff, the jumble of megaliths in front of her, the clover that came up past her ankles. And a few paces away, darkly outlined against the grey of the sea and the stones, Severus Snape. 

Hermione approached him, slowly. The wind had begun to spit, and Snape's dark hair blew wetly back from his face.

"So you've found me." There was a question behind his words somewhere, but Hermione wouldn't have been able to answer it even if she understood what it was.

"I see you've been looking into people's memories. What have you found?"

Hermione appreciated for the first time the danger of her situation. She had come to meet a man – a murderer – on a deserted stretch of moor, because of something she had seen in a vision. When Harry had done something similar, someone had ended up dead. Hermione doubted that any of the members of the Order would be rushing in to save her this time.

Straightening her back against the wind, Hermione answered her former professor in the only way she knew how. "You killed Dumbledore, but I think… I don't think you wanted to. I don't think you meant it, and I think you needed someone to know that."

Snape stared back at her, inscrutably. A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "You thought that I, a man who has been successfully serving two masters since before you were born, cried out to you? That I couldn't go on without someone telling me how hard it must have been, how cleverly I disguised my true intentions?"

"Yes. I think you did." Hermione was surprised to hear herself say it, but she knew it would be folly to say anything but the truth. "It's precisely because you've lived a double life for all these years that you do need to tell someone about it. You've had no one to confide in apart from Dumbledore, and you never realized how critical his confidence was until he was gone."

Snape's eyes snapped, but he didn't move. Hermione faced him defiantly. When he didn't speak, Hermione continued talking:

"I think I understand what happened that night. Dumbledore had gotten you to promise, and you had the Unbreakable Vow on you as well. That was what the Vow was about, wasn't it? That you would do anything it took to help Draco?"

"Yes. That I would carry his task through if he failed. You got that all from Narcissa's silly face, did you?"

"Hers, and Bellatrix's. She was so triumphant, but also shocked, I think, at whatever you were vowing to do. She hates you, you know."

"Is there anyone who doesn't?" Hermione was surprised at the ease with which he had accepted his exclusion from the society he was fighting for.

"But don't…I would have thought the other Death Eaters would like you, especially now…"

"The greatest stumbling block to your intelligence has always been your unwavering categorization of people. Not all teachers are rule-abiding, Miss Granger, and very few Dark Wizards enjoy the company of others like themselves. No, my coup has only risen me in favor with respect to the Dark Lord. The rest of them are, I am all too sure, torn between envy and hatred over my new status."

Hermione regarded the tall, wind-whipped figure before her. A man who had been worse than alone for most of his life. A man who was so adept at lying he probably didn't know half the time how he truly felt. A man who knew he could be killed at any moment, more likely than not by one of the people he was risking everything to protect.

"I could explain it to them, show them what I've seen – not everyone, but Harry and Ron, and the rest of the Order –" he cut her off, no longer fierce, but suddenly very weary-sounding.

"No, they cannot know. They do not want to believe it."

"Yes, they do! I believed you, Lupin would if I could convince him, Arthur and Molly will too…"

"They all loved Dumbledore more than they love figuring out the truth. The others would never let Lupin or Molly believe it for long, but if any of His followers heard it, they wouldn't need to believe it to justify killing me. You mustn't tell any of them anything. No one knows where you were going tonight?"

"No, Harry and Ron think I'm at my parents'."

"Very intelligent. And exceedingly foolish, Miss Granger. How could you be sure I hadn't manufactured those memories I placed in your head? You risked coming here to be slaughtered."

Hermione winced at his choice of words. "It wasn't just those flashes of memory. Everything else you did only made sense in one way. And there were other times… times when I thought I saw something in your face, just for a second…" Snape looked genuinely shocked. Hermione continued, her whisper hardly audible over the wind: "I risked coming here because I believed in you. I still do."

Snape's black eyes did not waver from Hermione's shining brown ones. "You know there's nothing you can do about this, Hermione." He had never used her first name before. Actually, Hermione couldn't think of a time before tonight when he had said anything to her that wasn't an insult.

"I… I know that. I understand that. But I can try to make just Harry see, to make him understand the truth. If I don't tell him, he'll come after you. He'll try to kill you."

"I am prepared for that eventuality. Potter must go on believing what he does." His voice was harsh again. "It's dangerous enough that you know."

Hermione's eyes blazed. "So you still think I might betray you? Or maybe you just think I'll _blunder_ somehow and give it all away." She was shaking too much to continue.

"I know that you will neither betray me nor make a mistake of any kind. I should have been more clear: it is dangerous enough _to you_ that you know this."

Reeling a bit, Hermione tried to get her mind around the fact that Snape had faith in her, and stranger still, that he was concerned for her safety. She thought she knew the answer now, but she asked the question anyway.

"Why me? Why did you choose me?"

Snape regarded her thoughtfully. "I am sure you think it is because you posses the perfect combination of intelligence, level-headedness, and access to the memories Dumbledore left and those that Harry was able to provide. And you are correct in thinking this."

Hermione nodded. She had also conveniently been nearly alone in Snape's presence just when he needed someone to send a message to.

Snape shook his head impatiently. "You don't understand as much as you think you do. Yes, it was lucky that we had those few seconds in the dungeons."

Hermione cut him off: "Harry gave us his Felix Felicis, Professor Snape. We each took enough to stay lucky through the fight."

Snape shook his head again. "Potter had that potion only because I needed him to. Did you think Slughorn would have had time to brew it between arriving at the castle and beginning his first lessons? I started it during the summer. It was I who suggested that Slughorn use it as a prize for his N.E.W.T. students, I who arranged for my old book to fall into Potter's hands to ensure that he would win the Felix Felicis. You don't believe me?"

Hermione hesitated. It did fit in perfectly with what she already knew. "So…"

"Yes, I already knew that I would confide in you, even before you knew you would be watching my office that night. Yes, you were in many ways the convenient choice. But the real reason I chose you was that I knew you could handle it. You have a mix of intelligence and bravery and fierce resolution I've only ever seen in one other witch. You have always reminded me…" he broke off.

His face was still fierce, but his eyes were now soft, full of the sadness and regret Hermione had glimpsed so fleetingly once before. A burning, altogether alive sensation had begun to gather deep in her stomach. Was he saying…he couldn't be saying that.

"You don't know how like her you are." Snape gave a painful laugh. "It would give the Dark Lord more than enough reason to kill me if he knew… that the only two women I was ever capable of loving were both brilliant muggle-borns."

Hermione realized suddenly that she wasn't surprised by this. She hadn't known, but perhaps she should have. With a spinning head and trembling hands, she rested one hand lightly on his shoulder and leaned up to kiss him softly. She could feel his sharp intake of breath and hear the almost imperceptible sigh that followed it. When she pulled away and opened her eyes, the look in his almost overwhelmed her with its mingled joy and anguish. She stumbled backward in the clover, no longer sure of her legs.

She wanted to tell him that she would do everything to justify his faith in her, that everything she did from now on would be in some way an attempt to make his sacrifices worth something. She didn't know how to say it out loud, but she thought he understood all the same.

Snape smiled once, briefly and genuinely, before he twisted away from Hermione and disapparated.

Hermione stood for a long time in the shearing rain, knowing she should be soaking in the enormity of Snape's sacrifice and the honor of the confidence he had placed in her. But all she could do was stand there and let the memory of his last look wash over her, over and over.

* * *

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* * *

A/N: it's been suggested that Ginny seems to be the more likely comparison to Lily when she was at Hogwarts, and before I go off rambling I should say both that I was as of very recently completly in the GinnynewLily camp, and that I'm really glad when people point out things like this in reviews. Now with that said, here is why I have come to think that at least Snape would consider Hermione to be more similar to Lily than Ginny is. 

There _are_ many similarities between Ginny and Lily (long, red hair, popularity, bravery), but we've seen this all through Harry's eyes. Harry never met his mother, properly, so the only way he has to think of her is a collage of things people have told him and memories and pictures he has seen. He doesn't actually know that much about her, and if he wants to picture her doing or saying anything, it's easiest to do that using something he knows as a model. Ginny, with her physical similarities to the younger Lily, is an easy model to use. Add to that the fact that Harry has always been fond of Ginny, to a degree that is arguable and probably varying, and it becomes pretty easy to imagine that Harry might fill in the gaps in his picture of his mother with attributes he admires in Ginny. It's not a creepy Oedipal thing; he's not making his mother into the girl he loves - he's just doing some kind of wishful thinking that his mother would also have had similar good qualities. Remember, Harry did a similar kind of thing with his father: he was told so many times that he was "just like" James, and assumed that his father was the original version of himself, only to find that while the physical resemblence was striking, there were some serious differences in attitude and actions.

Going off of the most accurate depection we have of Lily, her appearance in Snape's memory, it really does seem that she was more like Hermione in many non-appearance ways. (We know Snape's memory is objectively accurate because JKR has said in interviews that the Pensieve shows the actual truth of what happened, not the viewer's interpretation of it.) Lily was a prefect, she was annoyed by the rule-breaking, showing-off antics of James and Sirius, she tried to get the arguing boys to play fair, until the Slytherin called her a mudblood. It sounds a lot like Hermione. In fact, if Ginny is like anyone in this scene, it's more James than Lily. JKR has been careful to show us that Ginny is fairly cavalier with rules, that she has no qualms about throwing a good hex around, that she loves a practical joke as much as her twin brothers.

So yes, I think that absolutely there are aspects of Lily in Ginny, but I also think that there is a lot of James in her as well, and this is probably a big part of the reason Harry is drawn to her. Lily would have nothing to do with James and his rule-breaking until some (as of yet unknown) event brought them together. Hermione turned her nose up at Harry and Ron until they united to fight a troll.

Obviously, this is all just speculation, and my own opinion. And I've probably seriously undermined my story by sounding so defensive about a claim I made in it. I was thinking about working a bit of this into the story itself, but the characters wanted none of that - I think maybe it was too logical an exchange to put in after the conversation had started being driven by emotion. Maybe later I'll go back and try it again, but until then, it'll all stay here.


End file.
